Ball of the Century
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The Ball of the Century, also known as the Gatting Ball or simply That Ball, was a cricket delivery bowled by Australian bowler Shane Warne to English batsman Mike Gatting on 4 June 1993, during the first Test match of the 1993 Ashes cricket series, at Old Trafford in Manchester. The leg spin Warne imparted to the ball caused it to swerve in towards Gatting in its flight through the air, and then to deviate sharply away from him on bouncing. This caught Gatting by surprise; the ball hit his wicket and thus dismissed him (bowled), turning the balance of the match in Australia's favour. It was Warne's first ball against England in what would turn into a long and record-breaking career, and was of vast significance in the context of the match, the series, and cricket in general.
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[edit] Lead up
The 1993 Ashes series - the traditional series contested between England and Australia every two years - was the first to be played since the return to full strength of the England side, following Test cricket bans for several players who had defied the International Cricket Council to tour South Africa during the Apartheid era. Australia had won the Ashes from England in 1989, and had easily defended the urn in 1990/91 against the depleted English team. With the return of the experienced Mike Gatting and several other senior players in 1993, the stage was set for a closely matched confrontation.
With the pitch at Old Trafford cricket ground traditionally assisting spin bowling, England went into the game with two spin bowlers: Phil Tufnell and the debutant Peter Such. In contrast, Australia fielded a three-pronged fast bowling attack with the young Warne as a lone spinner.
English captain Graham Gooch won the coin toss and elected to bowl first, hoping to make use of early moisture in the pitch to make batting difficult for the Australians. Despite Australia's Mark Taylor and Michael Slater scoring over 100 runs before getting out, the tactic worked reasonably well, with Australia being dismissed for a moderate first innings total of 289 runs.
England also began well, reaching 71 runs before Mike Atherton was dismissed by Merv Hughes. Mike Gatting joined his captain in the middle and set about adding runs to hopefully give England a first innings lead. At this point, Australian captain Allan Border turned to his leg spinner, Warne.
Warne had played 11 matches in his career up to that point, having taken 31 wickets at a moderate bowling average of 30.80 runs per wicket. Although showing some promise, Warne's early career had so far been less than stellar, and his style of bowling - leg spin - was seen by many cricket followers as an antiquated art with little value in the modern game dominated by pace bowling since the heyday of the fierce West Indian attack of the 1980s. Furthermore, Mike Gatting was known as a world-class player of spin, and would be expected to give the young Warne a tough time at the crease.
It was in this context, and the face of experienced English batsmen who seemed likely to give England a lead in the first innings of the first Test, that Warne strode to the crease to bowl his first ball against Australia's "Old Enemy".
[edit] The ball
After his slow run-up of just a few paces, Warne rolled his right arm over and delivered a leg break to the right-handed Gatting. The ball initially travelled straight down the pitch towards the batsman, but about a third of the way along, as the ball picked up vertical speed, the rapidly spinning cricket ball started drifting prodigiously through the air down Gatting's leg side. The ball then bounced on the pitch well outside Gatting's leg stump.
Gatting responded by thrusting his left leg forward and to the leg side, and pushing his bat next to his pad to cover the spin of the ball and defend it away. Like most experienced batsmen, he would have expected this tactic to be perfectly safe - the ball pitching outside leg would rule out any possible leg before wicket decision, and if the ball spun more than expected his bat would be there to defend it.
The ball, however, bit into the pitch and spun far more sharply away from Gatting (towards the off side) than normally seen in England, deviating from its pre-bounce trajectory by an astonishing amount. It passed the outside edge of Gatting's bat and clipped the top of his off stump, clean bowling him. As Warne and his team mates jumped up in celebration, Gatting stood nonplussed for a few seconds, unsure what all of the fuss was about, until he finally realised that the ball had somehow hit his wicket. In a memorable image, Gatting simply stared in amazement for several seconds, before accepting his fate and walking off the field.
Television images showed Gatting as he walked off the field, shaking his head repeatedly with an expression of sheer disbelief on his face.
The dismissal was captured in a famous photograph by Steve Lindsell[1], in which Gatting's mouth is formed into a perfect "O" of surprise, while wicketkeeper Ian Healy raises his arms in celebration behind and Gatting's off bail spins somewhere above his head.
[edit] The aftermath
Gatting's wicket reduced England to 80 runs for 2 wickets, a position from which they never recovered, as Warne added the wicket of Robin Smith a mere four runs later. Warne also accounted for Gooch and Andy Caddick in the innings, helping to reduce England to a first innings total of just 210. Encouraged by their bowling, Australia declared their second innings at 432 for 5 wickets. Warne then contributed four more wickets as Australia won the match by 179 runs, winning the man of the match award for his efforts.
This result set the tone for the remainder of the series, as Australia cruised to a 4-1 victory, with Warne taking a total of 34 wickets at an average of 25.79 and sharing the man of the series award with Gooch.
[edit] Legacy
This series marked the beginning of a domination of world cricket by Australia, coinciding with the incredibly successful career of Warne, and a serious decline in English cricket. Warne's bowling also provided an eye-opening insight into the subtleties and power of leg spin bowling for modern cricket audiences used to pace attacks, marking a worldwide resurgence of popularity in spin bowling in general, and leg spin in particular.
Soon after the event, media began calling Warne's delivery to Gatting the Ball of the Century. Since then, Warne has come to be acknowledged as one of the best bowlers in history. Indeed as of 2006, he is the one of only two bowlers to have taken 600 wickets in Test cricket. Many of those wickets have been the result of amazing deliveries, some perhaps technically as good as the ball to Gatting. However, the significance of the ball in so many contexts as well as the sheer amazement generated in people who view video of its remarkable trajectory have made the appellation stick.
The most memorable quote which emerged as a result of Warne's achievement came from Gooch, on the reaction of Gatting: "He looked as though someone had just nicked his lunch.", particularly comical as Gatting was much-mocked for his rotundness.
[edit] Trivia
- In 2002, the Ball of the Century was ranked 92nd in Channel 4's list of 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.
- During the Old Trafford Test of the 2005 Ashes series, the long-retired Gatting re-created the Ball Of The Century with an automated bowling machine programmed to deliver leg spin.
